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The biggest shift in romantasy has to have been Rebecca Yarros realising that she could replace the air planes from her air force academy romances with dragons and be shelved in a whole new section of the book shop
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Mar 13, 2024 20:55
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did TBB discuss the Hugo Awards drama? https://locusmag.com/2024/01/mccarty-standlee-and-others-censured/ https://cdn.discordapp.com/attachme...61380de14e0e94& https://wrongquestions.blogspot.com/2024/02/the-2023-hugo-awards-somehow-it-got.html https://cdn.discordapp.com/attachme...b7d61c718cf5a7& Anyway, I got her book.  Seems like regular young adult fantasy pap, but just throwing a little support behind her
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Mar 13, 2024 21:08
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lol at the internal emails misspelling her name and calling the book The Iron Giant Guess the Hugo committee isn't big on reading
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Mar 13, 2024 22:32
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Most people think it's Hugo after the writer but it's actually after the computer video game and television programme character. This is a photograph of an actual Hugo Award medal, surrounded by the judges. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File%3AHugo_characters.png
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Mar 13, 2024 22:58
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3D Megadoodoo posted:Most people think it's Hugo after the writer but it's actually after the computer video game and television programme character. hallooo, er der nogen hjemme?
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Mar 13, 2024 22:59
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well shoot, I've snob-ified myself. I've been reading actual, genuinely great written works where I could reread a page just to admire the use of language and then I went and picked up a Warhammer 40k novel by Ben Counter because I wanted some brainless space marine fighting and it's like... I don't even know. But it's bad, OP. It's - like, the writing is fine, it's just very workmanlike when I'm used to First Man in Rome and War and Peace and so on.
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Mar 14, 2024 21:33
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cptn_dr posted:I saw the world's most miserable Sci-Fi/Fantasy section at a bookshop the other week. I think we've reached a Critical Maas.
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Mar 17, 2024 21:17
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https://twitter.com/sanktjosten/status/1769072045667627517 *Don Draper Yelling* THATS WHAT READING THE BOOK IS FOR
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Mar 18, 2024 14:10
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I always wonder about why they "annotate" their books so much. Who is it for? (I know it's 100% for show, because the other Book Tockers do it, don't "at" me [whatever that means  ])
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Mar 18, 2024 14:31
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Also why are all the "Bok Tonk" books so god drat ugly? Like 0/10 graphic design, everything looks like 2000s clipart and the typography is dogshit. If I was a writer I'd be mad. If I go to a normal bookstore and look at normal books, they're not that ugly.
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Mar 18, 2024 14:33
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It's probably a good thing that I'm a misanthrope or the fact that humanity is just loving doomed and spiraling the drain at this point would bother me a lot more.
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Mar 18, 2024 15:14
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i think we'll be ok in spite of online dumbasses
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Mar 18, 2024 15:15
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3D Megadoodoo posted:I always wonder about why they "annotate" their books so much. Who is it for? (I know it's 100% for show, because the other Book Tockers do it, don't "at" me [whatever that means Good question (I assume you mean the 8 trillion postit notes and 4 bookmarks she's got in that thing). I never do it, nor do I scribble notes in the margins. The sole exceptions are marking recipes I want to try in cook books and my favorites in an art history coffee table book that's big enough to kill a man with.
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Mar 18, 2024 15:27
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cumpantry posted:i think we'll be ok in spite of online dumbasses
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Mar 18, 2024 15:35
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Turbinosamente posted:Good question (I assume you mean the 8 trillion postit notes and 4 bookmarks she's got in that thing). I never do it, nor do I scribble notes in the margins. The sole exceptions are marking recipes I want to try in cook books and my favorites in an art history coffee table book that's big enough to kill a man with. This is going to depend entirely on the purpose of the reading. If you're reading something for pleasure, yeah there really isn't much need for marginalia of any kind, be it scribbled or on post it notes. But if you're going to have to interact with a text in any kind of critical or analytical way after reading it then those kind of notes about what you thought as you were going through it are invaluable. The "serious" portion of my library - mostly books I had to interact with as part of grad school or in relation to my own research projects - are fully of margin notes and dog ears. I'm not much one for post it notes, mostly because they can be removed, but I've had friends who were big on them. Everyone develops their own technique that really only makes sense to them. That said, you also see a TON of cargo culting of these methods, especially from students. Anyone who has ever bought a used undergrad history book has seen the ones where entire paragraphs - sometimes entire pages - are highlighted with is just worthless as a form of annotation. Active reading and taking notes - including marking up books themselves - are real skills and ones that are rarely taught at any level. Which is all to say that yeah, maybe she's just marking up everything because she has no idea how to take good notes and thinks more = better, but it could also be that she's putting together a fairly rigorous review or critique of it and that's just her process. I have no idea who she is or what kind of critic she is, so I'm not going to try and figure out if her note system is functional or for show.
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Mar 18, 2024 16:00
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Turbinosamente posted:Good question (I assume you mean the 8 trillion postit notes and 4 bookmarks she's got in that thing). I never do it, nor do I scribble notes in the margins. The sole exceptions are marking recipes I want to try in cook books and my favorites in an art history coffee table book that's big enough to kill a man with. Sometimes if I strongly object to something in a book, or if there's an actual factual error, I might write (in pencil) in the margins, for whoever reads the book when I'm dead. I've also acquired second-hand books where someone else has done this and I think that's fine. And at least once I have written "THIS WHOLE THING IS poo poo. DO NOT READ." on the front leaf, with my signature under it. Can't remember what it was but I do not do things like that lightly. (They're my books, I can do that if I want.) e: When I was a student, I just used my memory. But then I had a memory back in those days. Obviously it wouldn't ever work with "BookTok" books because they're literally literally all the same. No, I don't care if one is DANK MACADAMIA* and the other is enemies to lovers Tabaluga-as-MLP vore YA non-fiction. *) Hehehe Cyrano4747 posted:it could also be that she's putting together a fairly rigorous review or critique 3D Megadoodoo fucked around with this message at 16:10 on Mar 18, 2024 |
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Mar 18, 2024 16:03
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3D Megadoodoo posted:I might write (in pencil) in the margins, I use ink, I give zero fucks. It's a book, and books are either tools or entertainment, and I'm fine with leaving my mark on both. edit: that said, I keep all my marks to the margins, because nothing annoys me more than underlining that ends up obscuring the text because people are'nt robots and we're not good at making a straight line for that long. Maybe, maybe I'll underline one word or a short phrase if it's utterly vital but for the most part anything important can be noted in the margins.
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Mar 18, 2024 16:10
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3D Megadoodoo posted:I always wonder about why they "annotate" their books so much. To satisfy a compulsion.
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Mar 18, 2024 16:12
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fwiw as a purchaser of used books, I find it adorable to find written notes in the books, provided they don't make it impossible to read the text.
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Mar 18, 2024 16:13
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Cyrano4747 posted:I use ink, I give zero fucks. I like pencils in general because there's no chance it'll bleed or leave an indentation that can be seen from the other side. (Unless you press real hard I guess. I use B or 2B so that's not necessary.) Also pencil marks don't fade, ever, unlike many inks.
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Mar 18, 2024 16:14
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StrixNebulosa posted:fwiw as a purchaser of used books, I find it adorable to find written notes in the books, provided they don't make it impossible to read the text. It can also be fascinating if you follow along with the other person's thought process. Doubly so if you know them. There's one book I remember from grad school where the list of people who had checked it out went 1) My advisor in the 90s 2) a grad student of his in the early 00s who is now one of the leading experts in that field 3) me. Once I figured out who's notes were who's based on handwriting it was pretty fun to follow along and add my own. Plus I got to look smart as hell when I brought up some of his own points in a later discussion. 
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Mar 18, 2024 16:15
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I have a lot of books where the last person who's read them was my father, sometimes decades ago. One note I know he wrote (because I recognize his handwriting, obviously) is in pencil under a note written by someone else in ink. It has an arrow pointing at the first annotation and says "I didn't write this. 3D Megadoodoo Sr."
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Mar 18, 2024 16:18
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3D Megadoodoo posted:I like pencils in general because there's no chance it'll bleed or leave an indentation that can be seen from the other side. (Unless you press real hard I guess. I use B or 2B so that's not necessary.) Also pencil marks don't fade, ever, unlike many inks. See, I come at it from the other direction: most pencil is too light to really stand out against the page, especially when up against nice, dark printed letters. So it always ends up being had to see my notes. I just make sure to use inks that aren't going to bleed. Ink fading isn't really a problem on time scales less than a human life span unless it's either exposed to UV light (which being inside a book avoids) or it's just the shittiest ink imaginable. It can happen, I've got a few notebooks that I need to transcribe or at least scan because they're fading badly from a time period where I was using the cheapest garbage ink imaginable, but it's not something I worry about too much.
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Mar 18, 2024 16:18
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zoux posted:https://twitter.com/sanktjosten/status/1769072045667627517 I kinda disagree. that's what reading the summary is for. But the loving problem is the summaries are often vague garbage or simply dont exist anymore. A lot of books just have author or review blurbs on the back, which is complete bullshit. I dont care that gaiman or king blurbed Random Authors debut novel, tell me what the plot is about!!! Hell sometimes for epubs they're cut off and I have to get calibre to redownload the whole drat thing.
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Mar 18, 2024 18:17
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value-brand cereal posted:I kinda disagree. that's what reading the summary is for. But the loving problem is the summaries are often vague garbage or simply dont exist anymore. A lot of books just have author or review blurbs on the back, which is complete bullshit. I dont care that gaiman or king blurbed Random Authors debut novel, tell me what the plot is about!!! This is how summaries have been for romance and fiction for years, and it's always driven me nuts, even as a kid. "WHAT ARE YOU ABOUT" I shout at a book. It doesn't tell me. I'm reminded of short stories, which just don't tell you anything else. I grumble and move on, leaving them all unread.
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Mar 18, 2024 18:22
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I mostly don't mark up my books, even ones that are more technical or that I know I'll go back to, since I developed the habit in college of making all my notes in a notebook since our school bookstore gave you more money back if there was little to no highlighting/notes in the book when you inevitably sold it back at the end of the one class you'd ever need it for. I mostly never ended up with books that had interesting/funny notations, I had a couple with genuinely useful highlights (it was clear one of them came from someone who took the exact same class and knew how to highlight intelligently so basically all the midterm questions were covered) but a lot had no marking at all. The two funny instances were from a sci-fi lit survey course I took, where my copy of Canticle for Leibowitz had only one notation on like page 3 that said "is this some sci-fi poo poo", and my copy of the Dispossessed had a few notes that were kind of whatever observations, but at one point said "anarchy=good ???"
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Mar 18, 2024 18:37
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value-brand cereal posted:I kinda disagree. that's what reading the summary is for. But the loving problem is the summaries are often vague garbage or simply dont exist anymore. A lot of books just have author or review blurbs on the back, which is complete bullshit. I dont care that gaiman or king blurbed Random Authors debut novel, tell me what the plot is about!!! gently caress no go to hell. (USER WAS PUT ON PROBATION FOR THIS POST)
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Mar 18, 2024 19:16
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Well that's overkill.
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Mar 18, 2024 21:28
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I'm passionate about literature.
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Mar 18, 2024 21:35
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value-brand cereal posted:I kinda disagree. that's what reading the summary is for. But the loving problem is the summaries are often vague garbage or simply dont exist anymore. A lot of books just have author or review blurbs on the back, which is complete bullshit. I dont care that gaiman or king blurbed Random Authors debut novel, tell me what the plot is about!!! I really, really, really hate how many book summaries now are just something like "Fans of [some author] and [some other author] will love this" followed by just a vague hint at what the book is actually about because the references to other authors or works are meant to stand in for any kind of summary. Often I don't recognise the references, but even if I do, it just puts me off reading the book entirely. I guess it's good marketing for people who just mash "books similar to X" into a search bar, but it seems like a terrible way to get new readers to try out an author. It feels related to the whole trope obsession in a way where I guess some people want to know exactly what they're getting before they read the book. It's a bummer because some of my best reads have been random goon recs that I definitely wouldn't have picked up myself. I have times I just want a specific sort of book, but there's a lot to be said for trying something new periodically.
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Mar 18, 2024 22:50
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Enfys posted:It feels related to the whole trope obsession in a way where I guess some people want to know exactly what they're getting before they read the book. It's a bummer because some of my best reads have been random goon recs that I definitely wouldn't have picked up myself. I have times I just want a specific sort of book, but there's a lot to be said for trying something new periodically. Even more than this, writing serials, I find readers, some of them at least, are incredibly unwilling to go with the flow of a book or story. They want specific things from every chapter, even if the story demands other things. Once something doesn't deliver immediately, and hit precise expectations, they get pissy. Any ideas of setting things up long term, or showing something that's intended to be dealt with later, as a foundational aspect, is hotly rejected. That something might be unclear, for a little, is a sign to abandon something. Even if you've built up goodwill people want a constant drive. And if it was even a demand for a constant drive that'd be one thing, it's more a demand for every need and whim to be satisified. I think that goes back to your idea of "trope obsession." Readers being extremely uncharitable and not wanting any challenge. I feel like it's a particular problem highlighted with posting chapters and parts of serials every few days or once a week or so.
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Mar 18, 2024 23:28
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I never annotate books but I often wish I did, every time there's a paragraph I remember but can't find again. I often use google books or piracy sites to get searchable versions of texts I own in print just for this purpose.
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Mar 19, 2024 03:36
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Mrenda posted:Even more than this, writing serials, I find readers, some of them at least, are incredibly unwilling to go with the flow of a book or story. They want specific things from every chapter, even if the story demands other things. Once something doesn't deliver immediately, and hit precise expectations, they get pissy. Any ideas of setting things up long term, or showing something that's intended to be dealt with later, as a foundational aspect, is hotly rejected. That something might be unclear, for a little, is a sign to abandon something. Sounds like those people just don't like literature 
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Mar 19, 2024 08:31
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I think a lot of people want "content" that they like, and reading is just another form of it. If I imagine a person treating a book the same as a youtube video then the behavior kind of makes sense.
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Mar 19, 2024 15:56
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Yaoi Gagarin posted:If I imagine a person treating a book the same as a youtube video then the behavior kind of makes sense. This is the most depressing thing I've ever read.
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Mar 19, 2024 16:39
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they should save book backs for trope reveals
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Mar 19, 2024 17:08
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Mrenda posted:Even more than this, writing serials, I find readers, some of them at least, are incredibly unwilling to go with the flow of a book or story. They want specific things from every chapter, even if the story demands other things. Once something doesn't deliver immediately, and hit precise expectations, they get pissy. Any ideas of setting things up long term, or showing something that's intended to be dealt with later, as a foundational aspect, is hotly rejected. That something might be unclear, for a little, is a sign to abandon something. you arent a very good writer based on post history so im siding with the readers here
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Mar 19, 2024 17:09
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Gaius Marius posted:This is the most depressing thing I've ever read. Yep
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Mar 19, 2024 18:07
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I don’t know, I can sympathize a little. In a healthy book culture you’d have access to that information, maybe not directly, but through book reviews, blurbs from authors you trust that aren’t generic as gently caress, an evocative plot description on the inside jacket, friends. I remember one time I was just in the mood for some university novels, so I found a review I trusted and read a couple. That feels like it’s in the same ballpark as looking for tropes to fill a need.
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Mar 19, 2024 21:01
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I'm reading a book right RN now in IRL life. Tropes: Dutch people; alive-to-dead; pages made out of paper.
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Mar 19, 2024 22:41
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